Monday, 9 May 2016

CPD DIY - Maguire e-Training: Project Management Essentials

CPD DIY is where I
review quick, cheap, and accessible training courses and resources
for school librarians. We are expected to keep up with the latest
developments in libraries and keep our skills sharp with no time, no
budget and no peace!

Maguire e-Training
recently partnered with CILIP to offer discount training to library
and information professionals so they are a good place to start when
you're looking for some easy access, low cost, guided CPD. Maguire
modules usually clock in at around £25 a pop, but if you're a CILIP
member your first one is free and you can get a discount on later
modules bringing them down to around £20.

Besides the cost,
one of the great assets of Maguire's courses is that they are
entirely online from teaching to testing meaning that they can be
fitted around quiet times in your library – because god forbid
we ever leave right?

Now to the meat of
the thing:

Project Management
Essentials is taught in a series of videos and info sheets, which
I've got to admit I watched a couple of times over whilst doing other
things, which though adorably 'home made' at times were really
informative and helped my at least put names to some of the concepts
I'd already employed running projects before. The teacher/seminar
leader/ lecturer is pretty clear and concise and generally linked
things together well – so long as you were paying close attention.
While the info sheets ran through ideas in more detail and really
helped to bring home some of the concepts.

I've got to admit
here and now this course is very basic and the exam at the end
wasn't exactly taxing, but as an easy and accessibly way of getting
your head round a new topic it hits the spot, and it has certainly
given me some new ideas of how to handle large and group projects
more efficiently in the future.

More importantly in
terms of how school libraries work - in my experience anyway - it
also gave me a bit of sneaky insight into how to handle talking to
management and 'stake holder groups', and just how to present things
to get ideas through to these groups. How to present the
'cost/benefit ratios' of what you are proposing – like how yes a
D.E.A.R might eat 10 minutes into lesson time, but the relative
improvement seen in the results of students who read for 10 minutes a
week is X grades. I think, having done this training, that this kind
of presentation of data is possibly what we as librarians sometimes
do worst, we talk ephemera to bean counters and expect them to become
invested in our projects… something to think about anyway.

All in all, with
Maguire you get what you pay for, it wouldn't be fair to expect more
from this course at £25, but I can't say I feel gypped by what I did
get out of it. Its a good solid run down of the essentials
of project management, enough to get your head round the concepts and
probably enough to help us manage any projects we'll be undertaking
in a school setting.

Overall pretty good
for the price and a good place to start for a total beginner.